U.S. prosecutors have seized more than $25 million in cryptocurrency tied to international scams that defrauded thousands of victims across the United States and Canada, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
The largest complaint seeks some $12.1 million tied to romance scams that hit more than 200 people, followed by about $10.4 million flagged by Canadian authorities across more than 270 suspected victim transactions. The three remaining cases range from $285,000 to $2.4 million, including one in which scammers posed as recovery agents offering to retrieve funds stolen in an earlier fraud.
In each case, the launderers were mostly based in Southeast Asia, with IP addresses in China, Malaysia, and Cambodia, prosecutors said.
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